Wednesday. Wednesday was a good night. I actually made it to the City - and parked - by 7:30pm, and got set up pretty rapidly (it's becoming a routine), then was able to do a couple of things to test the sound system. Like record the feedback. Turns out most of the feedback is centered at 256Hz, which is higher than I thought.

Like squarely in the midrange.

Anyway, that means I might be able to do something about it by running the feedback eliminator's setup process. Normally, I just let it do its thing incrementally, but that obviously doesn't work there...

Though, honestly, the main issue I'm having is completely different. Their system is designed for the entrance "dance floor" area, which is pretty much just a large vestibule for us. Which means we're using the DJ's monitor speaker to "fill" the rest of the room. It's a good speaker, so it sounds fine, but we unfortunately have to point it directly above the singers - which means there's a speaker pointed at the mics.

This is never a good thing. For singers that project, it's fine. The quieter ones, though, are a challenge.

Anyway, we had a nice little crowd, though, not surprisingly, the J/G group didn't arrive at the stroke of 9:00pm. This is because I was on time. If I'd been late...

They were actually an even larger group than usual (10 singers, and some hangers-on), and they definitely weren't the only people there. In fact, I had 27 singers over the length of the night, which isn't too shabby, with a total of 6 rotations (though the first one was just myself and jannypanlj).

Evan and Amy came back. Maria and Tim spent most of the night - this was the first time I'd seen Maria in months. She's still interested in hostessing, and if it builds up, I'm interested. One of the issues on Anthony's birthday was digging up singers in the giant crowd - I could use someone to do that. Especially if the someone is young and sexy.

It's actually kind of sad, in many ways, how much sex sells.

As the night wore on, Kym not only sang, but sang two songs that weren't "Inside Out." Rachel, who now has her voice back, didn't sing at all, almost certainly because she now has her voice back, and so can't blame any minor imperfection on being sick. Patrick was being mellow, and didn't sing.

Dennis followed the so far typical pattern. He's apparently a KJ over in Oakland that raven2000 found online. They've been trying to meet ever since the show started.

But they've not yet been there at the same time.

For a change, things petered out at just about 2:00am, so I shut down on time, and was, I believe, on the road south by 3:00am. I was pretty exhausted (I just haven't been sleeping much), and ended up napping in the parking lot off Rengstorff.

Then home, and slightly more restful sleep.

I didn't do too much during the day Thursday, and was slowly getting ready for the evening, when timenchanter volunteered me to pick up electrichobbit at SFO. So I rushed out to get the vital stuff done (like picking up the extremely delayed toner cartridge, that of course UPS had to deliver while no-one was home. Turned out to be two cartridges. They're apparently trying to bribe me into not giving them bad feedback. It's kinda working), set everything up at the bar an hour early, then went and acquired The Mark.

His plane landed at 8:07pm. I was back, and running, just a little before 9:00pm. An acceptable delay, especially considering who I was bringing.

A fairly busy night, though bar income was a bit off, likely because people were drinking more water and sodas (it was pretty warm). There were a lot of people - 29 singers, and 5 rotations. And as is typical lately, the fifth rotation was a few hardy people between 1:35am and 2:00am.

Of people who hadn't been in for a bit, there were megnc86, spawrhawk, Matt H, Noe (it's been ages since she's been in - and she brought her posse, all of whom are damn cute), Veronica, and twitchet.

I was actually in some kind of voyeur heaven. There was a very large contingent of pretty young things, and they'd most all dressed for the heat. Sarah J, especially, was wearing this amazing dress.

synkitty had apparently never seen me break off mid-conversation like that before. It was a very distracting dress.

A very good night, 'twas.

Timmie and I decompressed chez April, and then it was home for some oblivion.

Friday, I worked on, then faxed out the copy for my yellow pages ad. I have no idea when that might "take," if at all (at least there is a fax machine at the number he gave me), but one of the changes I discussed with Johann has been implemented: The company name might still be wrong, but at least the first line is "Karaoke DJ."

I also threw together a flyer for the Cat Club, which I sent off to Patrick.

Then I hauled myself up to the Dome, where I got to spray termite poison all around the foundation. This was an exciting adventure, if only because there's a deck all the way around the Dome, and it's only about 3 feet off the ground for about half of the circumference. The really fun part was that the sprayer could only sit upright between the support beams.

Good times, good times.

The usual excellent dinner, then home, where I largely failed to go to sleep. I think it was about 7:00am before I actually crawled into bed. I just had this odd craving to watch "Sapphire and Steel"...

So, of course, Raven called me at noon. She was still at Dev's house, where she'd been helping to pack.

I pieced myself together, picked the pieces up, and got down to the Cherry mansion for what is likely the last time. He's pretty much moved out. I got her stuff together, which involved a visit to Dev's new place (quite nice), then fed her at Hobee's.

She'd never been, which I find odd. But whatever.

A little bit of afternoon napping, and then we headed up to Bootie.

Bootie was an odd experience. An interesting combination of feeling important, involved, and kinda belittled all at the same time.

I was on the guest list - very cool. As soon as djmysteriousd saw me, she smiled, waved, and sent Adrian over to talk to me. He introduced me to Fnord and Kollider, the guys doing the karaoke, who talked about letting me have their spare set of CDGs when their show was over.

And we were at Bootie, Smash-Up Derby was awesome as usual, said hi to Jim and Ace, ran into Mike F and a couple of female followers, ran into Jeff (the old KJ at KoC) at the mash-up karaoke thing. All in all, very, very cool.

I was a little disappointed that I wasn't the one doing the karaoke, but given that Kollider and Fnord went ahead and did their own, well, it's understandable. I was waiting on some kind of background tracks from A+D, I could understand them being too busy to provide them, so, y'know.

Of course, then it turned out that nearly half of the background tracks had been provided to them by A+D. Um.

And I sort of understand the online blurb about doing the karaoke because Kollider and Fnord approached them about it. Except as far as I can tell, it looks like I approached them about it at least a few months earlier. Granted, one generally doesn't go on about extreme historical accuracy in an advertising blurb. Still, mild ouch.

I definitely would have done a better job of the sound for the event, and my equipment would have been less... Mickey Mouse. But then, I'm local. They were flying up from LA, so I'm sure the vast majority of the setup was cobbled together from what could be found locally.

Anyway, I hung out until 2:00pm, though I had to escort Raven back to the car well before then - she had to be at something today at 8:00am, and she is, generally, diurnal. I was actually pretty tired myself.

So at about 1:55am, Fnord pulled me aside, and told me the group felt nervous about letting go of the CDGs. He took my card, but that was pretty much it.

By contrast, when I'd been thinking about doing the event, I'd been planning to have a stack of Bootie CDGs to give away.

So, yeah, so close, but yet so far. And a couple of mild slaps in the face in the meantime.

Still, it was Bootie, which I haven't been able to get to for ages.

I made it back down the peninsula without too many fatigue issues, and we collapsed into bed.

R has been delivered to her 8:00am thing, and I've finished my venting. So I think I'll go back to sleep.